I wasn’t good at corpo diplomacy, or ganger diplomacy, or any diplomacy really. I could get through the current exchange by following Stefen’s lead and the general flow of the conversation while sticking to normal street dynamics. You don’t show weakness and you don’t let anyone step in your fight for you, it made you look weak and broke the first rule.
Throwing Marchand to take the fire for me could let me walk away from the issue and likely wouldn’t cost her anything, her wealth and more importantly her connections could shield her from any ramifications of this whole situation even if she didn’t pay it any mind. Her level of power and prestige let her do that.
But it would make me look like I needed her to protect me and that was a bad look on top of putting me in her debt, which I technically was already doing. Agreeing to be her hand was largely giving her power over me, but by agreeing to a certain amount of control I’d gained a degree of her protection. If I actively made use of her past the arrangement then she’d actively make use of me past the arrangement.
The whole situation was a balance I hadn’t worked out the details of yet but I knew what this situation was at least. She could have had the agents sent away, killed or invited in without me knowing anything. She hadn’t done that. Instead she’d set up the situation where I’d need to accept her condition to be her hand going forward and now this was my first test fresh out the gate. Could I operate, without set up, with the correct level of control and strength.
She was watching over me through her own agents from afar, Stefen up close and from my own eyes with her netrunning gear. I was in her street after all, she hadn’t set the test up outside her control.
“As the third party, you understand that putting yourself at odds with our employers goals would make you a hostile element. For the purposes of this negotiation we need to know whether Mrs Marchand has any intention of stepping into our now separate situation?” The agent asked, turning his head but not his eyes to Stefen.
“Mrs Marchand has informed me that while she has all intention of supporting her hand in his endeavors with his work, that his own projects are his to operate. She does wish to suggest that both parties keep their firearms stowed as the front walls of the majority of the homes here are not armored. Damage to the architecture will incur fines and harm or destruction will incur more severe penalties.” Stefen said smoothly, like he was reading off a screen. I wondered if he was.
The agent looked more annoyed by this response than I thought he would be. Maybe my reading of him was being thrown off by the soldier borg implants.
“My employer wishes to know if there really is no room for negotiation... Sorry, we have not received your name.” The agent said as he subtly squared up his stance to me, cutting Stefen from his zone of focus. Stefen seemed to notice this and took a small step to the side and turned to face between us. Must be a part of his diplomacy training.
“You can use hand for now. As for negotiation, you’ll find that my stance hasn’t changed. I’m guessing that this stance is unacceptable and you have a response?” I asked as I adjusted my footing, not enough to provoke but enough to move quickly in case of attack.
“Well, Hand. If there is no room for negotiation then you’ll have placed yourself in a hostile state against my employer’s interests.” The agent said with a small side glance at Stefen.
Stefen gave a small shrug.
“I’m well aware. Do you have an actual response here or can I go back inside?” I asked. I was starting to drift into areas of diplomacy I wasn’t sure of now, I had to keep Marchand’s pride in mind as well as dealing with the actual consequences of my decision.
If I attacked first that did show strength but also took away a lot of the diplomatic avenues, if I attacked second then that might be taken as caution which is acceptable but I might not survive the actual attack.
I needed to attack, I had to drop my carefulness and planning and strike first from the front. That was likely Marchand’s test here, would I step into an obvious fight with no backup for nothing more than what I wanted to protect and her pride as a fixer. I could always back off, launch an ambush as they collected Lla from my home and rely on Marchand’s proximity to force her into putting the agents down quickly.
That would be throwing her pride on the floor for my own ends though, she might keep me as a hand but it would be a very different relationship. She’d demand much stricter rules for me to avoid situations like that again while making less reserved risks with my life, I’d just a ganger in more expensive clothes.
“This is me personally telling you to remove your team from this premises and give up on your target. It’s not happening. If you don’t want to do that then I can only apply pressure until you do.” I said, trying to frame the reality of the situation diplomatically. Corpo types liked stuff laid out properly, they responded better to fancy speech than crude.
“Okay. We’ve reached an impasse and I can drop the face. Kid, it’s three versus one and even me alone could your rip that chrome head off that tiny flesh puppet of a body you’ve got before you could do anything. Give us the girl and we can just leave, we’re not looking to wade into waters here but we’ll stamp on a tiny thing like you in the shallows if we have to.” The agent said as he subtly loosened his combat blades from the sockets in his arms, they didn’t release out yet but I could see the tips in the shadows of the slitted openings in his synthskin. What little their was on his cyberarms.
“I get it, I’m a kid. Your feeling put up to something because who even fights a kid. Even if you win what does that even say about you? It’s fine though. Tell you what. Leave your overwatch to twiddle their thumbs over there and we’ll fight one on one. At least you can say you didn’t need backup to put the kid down.” I said with a bit of a smile. I knew I was drawing him in. He knew I was drawing him in. He knew I knew that. Everyone here saw the obvious bait. Didn’t mean he wasn’t going to take it though.
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“We’re doing it like this? Really? Alright kid. Fine. I’ll spill your brain meat across the walls here and we’ll call all this done with. I’m sure you’ve got some fancy tricks to have the confidence to be a hand to the local fixer and talk a big game but I’ll put you down anyway. Unless your head is a bomb then you’re no threat to me. That’s just physics.” The agent said as he took a step closer and popped his arm blades free of their hidden sheathes.
He was kind of right.
Sanctum do you mind if I use the velvet worm program? I don’t think what I have will punch through his corpo milspec ICE and I know your daemon is all compatibility and high penetration.
[The daemon was programmed for the User to use at their will. It is free to use whenever the User needs it.]
I still feel like it’s your tool though. I might grab for it in an emergency but it’s not mine to just throw around.
[It was created using User brain cells as a processing component for the Sanctum software to operate.]
Just because you borrow some brain cells doesn’t mean I can just steal your scripts. But thank you Sanctum. Now I have to try and not die.
[Sanctum has prepared the User’s Abilities to the highest levels of readiness.]
My exchanges with Sanctum were getting faster as time passed with us being tangled together. I didn’t know the exact amount of time but when I focused on the agent in front of me he was still settling into a combat stance.
“I’ll just throw it out there. So those watching don’t call me out. Do you want to do this first blood, knock out or-” I started to banter but was cut off.
“Enough kid. You’re all four feet of nothing. Let’s just get this over with.” The agent said before he shook his arms in a sudden jerk which made the blades quickly light up behind their edges from orange until they glowed pale yellow. The cutting edges were left cold and hard with the body of the blades superheated to burn the cuts as they were made. Very dangerous.
I dashed forwards with as much power as I could put from my legs. The world slowing around me as I moved. It didn’t help much as even in the slow time the agent in front of me started his own dash at me far faster than I could without apparent effort.
My blade was pulled free and swung at him in one smooth motion with my right arm at a speed that most people would struggle to defend against in a fight. I might be small but I was very well practiced at my draw and strike skills along with Sanctum’s skills putting in the slight adjustments needed to pull it off optimally.
The agent made a mockery of my effort though as he simply pulled his right arm around and under my approaching arm as he tilted his torso away from the strike even as he stepped into my zone of control, leaned back in and brought his arm back around to backhand me across the side of my head. The strength of the blow was one thing, the three separate blades slicing my head open as they brushed by with his arm motion was another.
I rolled across the ground and back to my feet in a single roll and reoriented myself against my target as I got my feet under me as I ignored the smell of burning plastic and smoke filling the right side of my peripheral vision with blue streams that reminding my of Marchand’s cig.
Even as I got my arms back into a defensive posture with my blade ready to strike the agent was in front of me again with two steps and a slight adjustment of posture in the lower gravity of slow time.
His left arm struck out towards me in a simple straight punch but the heated blades along wrist and knuckles promised it would be more than a simple punch.
Pulling myself down and aside to dodge didn’t seem to be enough, he just leaned into my movements as I made them. I couldn’t adjust my posture any faster in that small gap of time.
His fist grew closer to my face with his arm rotated to land an uppercut that would likely inflict terrible damage to my neck even if it didn’t tear my head off. This guy was a total borg, I couldn’t risk a major injury when it could easily mean instant death.
Boost it, Sanctum.
[Activating AAN Boost: ETR 00:25rs/04:16cs]
The world grew a little more pale around me. I hadn’t noticed in the already bright gym but it was quite noticeable in the darker streets with just the yellow and white glows of the street lights. The agent was very nearly frozen in front of me with only the slightest movement of position to suggest it wasn’t a statue, his fist still creeping towards me through the otherwise frozen world.
My body under me wouldn’t move an inch, it just couldn’t reasonably operate at the speeds I was currently processing at. My head was mostly fine though with only an odd lack of gravity and heightened momentum to be felt when I turned my head to look around me. I looked at Stefen who was just frowning at the agent as he attacked me, his arms still behind his back. What was interesting was I could see he’d slightly deployed a hidden barrel from his right arm just below his wrist that was hidden behind him, it looked wide enough to be a shotgun barrel but I was betting it was a slug luncher to put down borgs.
I swung my head around through the odd physics to look at my surroundings where I was Noe standing at her balcony with a scared look to her eyes. I was hoping she wouldn’t even know this had happened until long after. She’d already been scared by seeing me get messed up before.
Turning back to the borg in front of me, his fist had barely moved just slightly forwards. I couldn’t move my body out of the way and he was too close to reasonably avoid the blow to my chin and neck.
Even if I leaned my head as far out of danger as I could he’d still clip a large part of my neck with his fist and blades.
Instead I had to blunt his strike but I couldn’t do what I’d done before and headbutt the punch, it hadn’t worked in the gym and it would work even worse here. I couldn’t use my skull but I still had my teeth.
The fist was close enough so I brought my head up to it and braced myself before trying to close my mouth right down on the wrist behind the exposed wrist blade. It wasn’t until I was about half way into the bit that I noticed what the issue was. I’m not the best at physics, education or experience, so it was somewhat of a surprise when I realized that my teeth had mostly shattered along with blowing a lot of my gums apart as well as tearing the muscles in my jaw. A quick glance at the damage readout on the interface was all I needed to see the details.
Health:
Several damaged synthetic teeth.
Several destroyed synthetic teeth.
Several synthetic gum avulsions.
Several muscle tears throughout jaw structure.
Not much I could do about it now though, instead of pausing it the bite I finished it off and tore away whatever had been gripped by my now ruined mouth. In the slow time we were in the saliva, aspire and blood was left hung in the air as it slowly started to fall along with a collection of torn off synthskin, cyberware wiring, synthetic muscle and what seemed to be the heating module and mount for the blade in the agent’s wrist.
The time hadn’t spun back up yet so I looked over the damage I’d done, his arm was basically stripped to his steel wrist bone from his hand to almost his elbow on one side along with ripping out the module that allowed his blade to sit secure on his arm which came out with a load of wiring and a smaller module which seemed to be the heating system as it sputtered and died even in the slow motion, the blades already beginning to change color as they cooled.
With my head off to his left fist’s left side and my neck pulled under his strike by using my bite as leverage to move my flesh body just enough out of the way. I looked at the agent from the corner of my eye as I let time speed back up.
I was thrown backward immediately from the left over momentum but kept my feet under me.
The agent looked at his damaged arm and then to my ruined mouth and looked furious.